Was Yankee Stadium Deal Illegal?

Assemblyman Richard Brodsky claims New York City is getting little in exchange for the tax-payer funded, $1.3 billion new Yankee Stadium. Furthermore, he alleges that the city and the sports team may have violated tax regulations to build the complex.

NY Times: New York City and the Yankees may have violated federal tax regulations and state laws in using $943 million in tax-exempt bonds to build the baseball team’s new stadium, according to a report issued on Tuesday by Assemblyman Richard L. Brodsky.

Saying the taxpayers are footing the bill for the $1.3 billion Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and are getting little in return other than higher ticket prices and the loss of parkland, Mr. Brodsky, a frequent critic of the deal, said that the report stems from a review of thousands of pages of previously unreleased documents.

Although city officials and the Yankees hotly disputed many of the findings, the report concluded that the city and the state invested as much as $850 million in cash and tax breaks in the new stadium, which sits across 161st Street from the team’s historic home in the South Bronx.

“This stadium is being built by the people of the city and the state of New York,” Mr. Brodsky said during a press conference at the north end of the new stadium, at 164th Street and Jerome Avenue. “In return, they’re getting almost nothing. This deal does not serve the public’s interest. It serves the Yankees’ interest.”...

Despite the report’s heavy use of footnotes referring to project documents, the Yankees also took Mr. Brodsky to task for using “inaccurate facts” for personal aggrandizement. Alice McGillion, a spokeswoman for the Yankees, said in a statement released on Tuesday that stadium construction had had an enormous impact on the Bronx, both in terms of hiring construction workers who live in the Bronx and by providing 30,000 tickets a year to neighborhood organizations.